There’s a famous quote, attributed to the late New Yorker columnist Pauline Kael from right after the 1972 presidential election: ”I can’t believe that Nixon won. Nobody I know voted for him!”

This line echoed in my head when I read Lisa Miller’s Newsweek column, Why This Pope Doesn’t Connect (H/T: Off the Record). Please go and read the column. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Finished? Very well.

In the column, Ms. Miller charges that American Catholics are ignorant or disinterested that the pope is coming. Ignorance is easy to understand—after all, the media is the media—Ms. Miller, included. But as for her suggestions that Catholics are disinterested, she offers only anecdotal evidence from three sources. I have no reason to question the integrity of Fr. Gerald Fogery, S.J. who has an obligation to the students of the University of Virginia. Likewise, for Fr. John Dufell, because a parish priest’s obligation is to his parish. I’m not sure why the D.C. lawyer Paul Kane laughed at the idea of seeing the pontiff, but his attendance at church at Georgetown would suggest a couple of ideas. And I haven’t seen any bulletins from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but if Barbara Breshcia has been praying several mornings a week at the noted Cathedral, I have a hard time believing she didn’t know the pope was coming, though admittedly, the Cathedral website mentions it only once, buried in the middle of the “Monthly Events” section of their site. Maybe it’s my point of view from a fish eating, practicing American Catholic, but I have been absolutely fascinated with the pontiff’s trip. I mean, we’re not hosting just some foreign dignitary or religious leader, these United States are welcoming the very Vicar of Christ here. But I think it’s also fair to say that Ms. Miller’s column is part of a bigger problem, that the press just doesn’t ”get” religion. Sure, they understand the broad strokes. Some of them may even be adherents to a religion. But like I, as a sports fan, couldn’t write a column on Major League Soccer that would be passable to any MLS fan (wherever that guy is), most members of the press just don’t see past their nose on religion. They have to reduce the story to some opportunity to show how far out of tune the Vatican is with America, then act like it’s the Church that’s not upholding their end of the deal.

Today’s Chicago Tribune also leads off its papal coverage with mentioning the sex-abuse scandal that rocked the Church in America. I hate this story. I hate it because the scandal was real and was just awful. I hate it because I’ve personally known 2 priests in my own Archdiocese to be wrapped up in the scandal—one of whom I knew well and to whom I looked up to a lot. I hate it because I know it wasn’t just priests in America—Canada had its own problems before they reared their ugly head in the USA. I hate it because I hear the jokes people tell, thinking they’re funny; I hate it because real people got really hurt; I hate it because the scandal has given people concrete reason to walk away from Christ’s Church and never turn back. But I also hate it because it’s the first story that non-Catholics can come up with when they think of Catholicism. A little over a week ago, I wrote some words that my mom told me when I went to college: “If you stop learning about your faith when your 18 years old, you’ll always have an 18 year old’s understanding of your faith.” It applies here, too. If the last time that journalists handled the Catholic Church, it was about Bernard Cardinal Law and his grievous mishandling of the Boston Archdiocese, then that’s the thing they have to mention in their article. Hopefully, for the next few years, the press can offer a story about Catholicism that mentions the Pope’s apostolic mission to the United States, since this is the most recent story they’ll have in their file.

These are heady days to be a Catholic in America. Some churches are being closed and locked for lack of parishioners, others cannot fit enough services into a Sunday morning to handle the crowds, everyone is feeling the impending crisis of a priest shortage, because a whole generation walked out of the Seminaries at once after the Second Vatican Council—and not many are stepping up to fill that void. The pope will land on shores of people who have let go of their faith, who never learned about their Faith, who never taught their children, whose children won’t have anyone left to teach them. The Pope will find dioceses who financially bankrupt, universities who are theologically bankrupt and a citizenry who are morally bankrupt. BUT! He’ll find a church who is rediscovering Tradition in a world that once cast it aside, he’ll find a church that has wandered for a long time, he’ll find a church that is hungry for leadership. A church that wants something to hope for, for a change. A church that has cried a lot of tears lately. A church that wants, more than anything, to be alive again.

This is the stuff that you don’t find in Newsweek.

Hope isn't printed on the pages of Newsweek.

It’s in a different kind of book.

Hope.